Friday, December 16, 2005
Deconstructing Moth-Eaten Paradigms
A simple Christmas tale raises more questions than it answers... (mild profanity)
...as the pervasive gender and specie-ist oppression inherent in the rigid North Pole economic societal structure is revealed in all its hideous majesty...
How indeed? And in other news, so you thought he was a homicidal maniac??? Think again.
...as the pervasive gender and specie-ist oppression inherent in the rigid North Pole economic societal structure is revealed in all its hideous majesty...
What might this story involve beyond the simple tale of reindeer and elf struggling to find their place in society? The snowman's song "Silver and Gold" provides a clue -- the story is about the economy of Christmas as much as anything else, an economy which disguises the economic base of the larger society in which the narrative has been constructed. Although Sam pretends not to realize this, he slips at times, speaking in terms of "business going on as usual" and Christmas coming and going "on schedule."
Rudolph's story is clearly not one of good versus evil. The other reindeer aren't evil, just insensitive, as they engage in their jockish activities of head butting and other forms of male bonding, which are, as Fireball chortles to Rudolph, "a great way to show off in front of the does" under the watchful eyes of their baseball capped and whistle tooting coach reindeer. The theme, like so many texts before it, is how an individual gains social acceptance, but the emphasis on how the social activities the reindeer children perform prepare them for entrance into the labor force makes it clear that this acceptance and work are somehow inextricably linked...
Rudolph saves the day. How can we read this? The connection is clear once we listen to Santa's words, repeated twice as the sled launches into the sky: "Full power!" "Yes, sir!" Rudolph replies, and switches on his nose, over which he has gained mastery. And the glow of that nose, cutting through the fog of confusion, becomes the glow of a neon sign, or the television screen, or the fluorescent effluvium of a mall's lights. Rudolph is the force which enables the Christmas economy to exist, which brings consumer and consumed together: he stands for the power of advertising, justifying his own existence in a perverse way, for how could the Christmas machine exist without its representations in the media?
How indeed? And in other news, so you thought he was a homicidal maniac??? Think again.
2 Comments:
By 
Pile On®, at
Fri Dec 16, 06:25:00 PM:
Thanks for the link Cass darlin'.
Been a while since I had one of those.
By Cassandra, at
Fri Dec 16, 06:55:00 PM:
